Misplaced Pages

#248751

56-548: The magazine is not highly regarded by science fiction historians, but some well-received stories appeared, including "Who?", by Algis Budrys , which formed the basis for Budrys's novel of that name , and several stories of Robert E. Howard 's, rewritten by L. Sprague de Camp to feature Howard's character Conan the Barbarian . Under Santesson's tenure the quality declined somewhat, and the magazine became known for printing much UFO -related material. A collection of stories from

112-557: A fantasy, this story of a dysfunctional family has a fantasy feel, rather like much postmodern literature . Reviewer Ifdary Bailey wrote that this "everyday story of family life in a revenge tragedy , of relations and revelations, hidden identities and loss of identity, incest and inheritance, all brooded over by the Father Who Will Not Die, carries itself forward swiftly and surely to its conclusion with strength and control." Clute's second novel, Appleseed (2001),

168-644: A flood of new U.S. magazines: from a low of eight active magazines in 1946, the field expanded to twenty in 1950, and a further twenty-two had commenced publication by 1954. Fantastic Universe was launched in the midst of this publishing boom. The publisher was King-Size Publications, founded by Leo Margulies and H. L. Herbert. Margulies had been in the pulp industry since 1932, having worked for Frank Munsey and then for Beacon Magazines, where he had had overall responsibility for all their titles, including several sf pulps such as Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories . The first issue of Fantastic Universe

224-513: A half-dozen novels, with a wife and children to support. After 1960 Budrys wrote less fiction and worked in publishing, editing and advertising. He became better known as among science fiction's best critics than as writer, reviewing for Galaxy Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , a book editor for Playboy , a longtime teacher at the Clarion Writers Workshop and an organizer and judge for

280-561: A hearing and also that the controversies were good for circulation." Fantastic Universe published several significant stories during its seven-year history. These included stories from Tales of Conan , a collection of four Robert E. Howard stories rewritten as Conan stories by L. Sprague de Camp . Three of the stories were published in Fantastic Universe , two before the book, and one after: Other notable and widely reprinted stories included: Other writers who appeared in

336-513: A regular book review column. When Santesson took over from Margulies as editor a year later, an immediate change was an increase in the number of articles about UFOs. Santesson ran several articles by writers such as Ivan T. Sanderson , Kenneth Arnold , and Gray Barker . Lester del Rey , however, felt that Santesson was not a believer in UFOs: "So far as I could determine, Santessen [sic] was skeptical about such things, but felt that all sides deserved

392-800: Is a Canadian -born author and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy literature who has lived in both England and the United States since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part of science fiction's history" and "perhaps the foremost reader-critic of science fiction in our time, and one of the best the genre has ever known." He was one of eight people who founded the English magazine Interzone in 1982 (the others included Malcolm Edwards , Colin Greenland , Roz Kaveney , and David Pringle ). Clute's articles on speculative fiction have appeared in various publications since

448-405: Is clear from The Darkening Garden is that Clute has read and internalized a vast range of books and cites them with accuracy and precision. Hilary Bailey, reviewing The Disinheriting Party, wrote, Clute's comic timing is always right, and like a good racehorse he keeps his wind to the end. Around the strange events — the undying father who impregnates his wives and children with strange fruit,

504-724: Is galloping too hard. Choosing a complicated plot, he may be making the story go too fast to sustain the weight of imagery he puts on it, moving too quickly to reveal everything he idiosyncratically sees. Describing Clute's criticism, Davis has written, When his criticism first appeared in New Worlds, his essays were typical of the controversial New Wave fiction they accompanied; they were counter-cultural, implicitly anti-American, deliberately stylized, and they introduced both intellectual jargon and four-letter words. ... SF writers, desperately wanting their reviewers to shill for them, found that Clute's intellectual acumen seemed to be demoting

560-492: Is honest; some review columns have such titles as "Nonsense is what good adventure SF makes silk purses out of", "Prometheus Emphysema", "An empty bottle. An empty mind. An empty book", "Book of the Mouth", and "Mage Sh*t". Clute has issued a polemic he calls the "Protocol of Excessive Candour", which argues that reviewers of science fiction and fantasy must not pull punches because of friendship: Reviewers who will not tell

616-519: Is not simple, though it is precise and at its best exhilarating." Author Henry Wessells, in a review of The Darkening Garden, wrote: Those of us who might wish for a minim of Johnsonian directness (a single direct statement like a whack to the head), whether as starting point or as conclusion, really should know better by now. Clute is the master of periphrasis and the circling, reiterated metaphor , employing pyrotechnic diction to summon insights that are at once calculated and spontaneous. ... What

SECTION 10

#1732791212249

672-411: Is not the way English tends to be written, but it is the way I tend instinctively to write. When it goes off it can get absurdly pretentious — it's all various lines of harmony and no music — but when it doesn't, it can be the way that somebody who is at the dawn of a language might feel. Matthew Davis has written, "Clute stands out, not just because of the depth and breadth of his knowledge, but also for

728-410: Is remarkable. That he continues to publish his opinions with such wit and style is our great good luck. We need him. But we can also enjoy him. Clute had gained a reputation as a critic before his second novel appeared, and some reviewers admitted that they found it "difficult" to read; others found it "intimidating" to review, as though trying carried the jeopardy of being found failing. Paul Di Filippo

784-409: Is the story of trader Nathanael Freer, who pilots an AI -helmed starship named Tile Dance en route to the planet Eolhxir to deliver a shipment of nanotechnological devices. Freer meets a man calling himself Johnny Appleseed, who rejoins Freer with his lost lover, Ferocity Monthly-Niece. Meanwhile, a terrifying, data-destroying "plaque" is threatening the galaxy's civilizations. Clute has proposed it as

840-513: The Los Angeles Times , The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , The New York Review of Science Fiction , The Observer , Omni , The Times Literary Supplement , The Washington Post , and elsewhere; some of these writings appeared in his early collection, Strokes . Though Clute is chiefly known for his critiques of fiction, he has also reviewed other modes, such as film. His language can be as blunt and amusing as it

896-653: The L. Ron Hubbard Writers and Illustrators of the Future contest. Budrys also worked as a publicist; in a famous publicity stunt , he erected a giant pickle on the proposed site of the Chicago Picasso during the time the newly arriving sculpture was embroiled in controversy. He last resided in Evanston, Illinois , where he died from metastatic malignant melanoma on June 9, 2008, at age 77. John Clute John Frederick Clute (born 12 September 1940)

952-581: The 1960s. He is a co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (with Peter Nicholls ) and of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (with John Grant ), as well as the author of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, all of which won Hugo Awards for Best Related Work (a category for nonfiction). He earned the Pilgrim Award , bestowed by the Science Fiction Research Association for Lifetime Achievement in

1008-629: The SF magazines of the 1950s and elsewhere, several revived as bylines for vignettes in his magazine Tomorrow Speculative Fiction , is "William Scarff". Budrys also wrote several stories under the names "Ivan Janvier" or "Paul Janvier", and used "Alger Rome" in his collaborations with Jerome Bixby . Budrys's 1960 novella Rogue Moon was nominated for a Hugo Award and was later anthologized in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973). His Cold War science fiction novel Who?

1064-576: The United States from 1956 until 1964. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at New York University in 1962 while living with writer and artist Pamela Zoline . Clute married artist Judith Clute in 1964. He has been the partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. Clute's first professional publication was a long science-fictional poem entitled "Carcajou Lament", which appeared in TriQuarterly in 1959. His first short story (one of his few)

1120-535: The age of 11 to want to become a science fiction writer. His first published science fiction story was "The High Purpose", which appeared in Astounding in 1952. In 1952, Budrys worked as editor and manager for such science fiction publishers as Gnome Press and Galaxy Science Fiction . Some of Budrys's science fiction in the 1950s was published under the pen name "John A. Sentry", a reconfigured Anglification of his Lithuanian name. Among his other pseudonyms in

1176-408: The author of an early SF encyclopaedia, the magazine kept a fairly high quality through Merwin's departure after a year, and through the subsequent brief period of caretaker editorship by Beatrice Jones. The quality of the fiction is thought by Tuck to have fallen during Santesson's period at the helm, though this was not entirely his fault—there were a great many other magazines competing for stories by

SECTION 20

#1732791212249

1232-648: The debt there were personality conflicts and that the company couldn't generate enough income for two investors. The editorship passed to Hans Stefan Santesson with the September 1956 issue. In late 1959 the magazine was sold to Great American Publications , and it was significantly redesigned. The size was increased to that of a glossy magazine, although the magazine was still bound rather than saddle-stapled . Circulation figures for Fantastic Universe are unknown, since at that time circulation figures were not required to be published annually, as they were later. After

1288-531: The essay collection The Darkening Garden: A Short Lexicon of Horror. The third edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (with David Langford and Peter Nicholls ) was released online as a beta text in October 2011 and has since been greatly expanded; it won the Hugo Award for Best Related Work in 2012. The Encyclopedia ' s statistics page reported that, as of 24 March 2017, Clute had authored

1344-413: The essay on himself for The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Clute wrote that his "criticism, despite some curiously flamboyant obscurities, remains essentially practical; it has appeared mostly in the form of reviews, some of considerable length." He told an interviewer, The connections between one sentence and another may be a couple of layers down in terms of the metaphors implied, or stated. And that

1400-509: The field of science fiction scholarship, in 1994. Clute is also author of the collections of reviews and essays Strokes ; Look at the Evidence: Essays and Reviews ; Scores ; Canary Fever ; and Pardon This Intrusion. His 2001 novel Appleseed, a space opera , was noted for its "combination of ideational fecundity and combustible language" and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book for 2002. In 2006, Clute published

1456-464: The first novel in a trilogy. Science fiction and fantasy author Paul Di Filippo called it "a space opera for the 21st century." Keith Brooke suggested that Clute himself would be the best reviewer for this multilayered novel. Clute's first significant science fiction reviews appeared in the late 1960s in New Worlds . He has reviewed fiction and nonfiction in such periodicals as Interzone ,

1512-417: The fourth issue, January 1954, cut the price to 35 cents, and Fantastic Universe stayed at that price for the rest of its life. The page count also dropped, to 160 pages with the fourth issue, then to 128 pages with the eighth issue, September 1954. The page count stayed at 128 through the rest of the digest period, and for the first five issues of the "glossy" period under the new publisher. The last issue cut

1568-551: The great majority of articles: 6,421 solo and 1,219 in collaboration, totalling over 2,408,000 words (more than double, in all cases, those of the second-most prolific contributor, David Langford ). The majority of these are Author entries, but there are also some Media entries, notably that for Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens . Clute was a Guest of Honour at Loncon 3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention , from 14 to 18 August 2014. Raised in Canada, Clute lived in

1624-537: The hypocrisies of stroke therapy, that telling the truth is a way of expressing love; self-love; love of others; love for the genre, which claims to tell the truth about things that count; love for the inhabitants of the planet; love for the future. Because the truth is all we've got. And if we don't talk to ourselves, and if we don't use every tool at our command in our time on Earth to tell the truth, nobody else will. His review column of this name began at Science Fiction Weekly and moved to Sci-Fi Wire. Contributing

1680-462: The identities hidden even from the people themselves, the changes of location from New York to Lambeth to the ghastly death ship on which characters crouch and mumble — John Clute keeps his footing, playing over them the strong light of an individual imagination. Images and metaphors, as in poetry, accrete, occur and recur, with not a word wasted. It is hardedged and brilliant, but it may be that John Clute, in trying to avoid slop, sentiment and longueurs,

1736-448: The individuality of his writing; even the most formal sentence plucked from one of his scholastic works is readily identifiable due to his individual judgement and style." SF Site 's Rich Horton agreed that Clute is "a man known first and foremost as a critic, and moreover a man known for his formidable intelligence and vocabulary, and his enjoyment in wielding both ... anyone familiar with John Clute's critical work will know that his prose

Fantastic Universe - Misplaced Pages Continue

1792-440: The last King-Size Publications issue was September 1959, and it was followed by an October 1959 issue from Great American. The remaining five issues followed a regular monthly schedule; the last issue was March 1960. The volume numbering scheme was fairly regular; the first five volumes had six numbers each. Volume 6 had only five numbers, in order to get the new volume 7 to start with the new year, in 1957. This lasted until volume 10

1848-468: The line between style and substance is blurred. And that's Appleseed 's biggest problem. While Clute writes in a poetic and wildly evocative fashion, he sacrifices style for substance. Appleseed comes across as a peyote-powered academic experiment, a fusion of William S. Burroughs ' Naked Lunch and Lewis Carroll 's Jabberwocky ... It's never really clear what's going on, or to what end — but it sounds really cool. and Keith Brooke wrote, "This

1904-400: The magazine folded, the publisher entertained plans to publish material bought for the magazine as a one-shot issue to be titled "Summer SF", but the issue never appeared. Santesson did later edit an anthology drawn from the magazine, titled The Fantastic Universe Omnibus . The first issue included stories by Arthur C. Clarke , Philip K. Dick , and Ray Bradbury . According to Donald Tuck ,

1960-495: The magazine had had no artwork except small "filler" illustrations; now interior illustrations complementing the stories were introduced, and photographs and diagrams accompanied some of the articles. A fan column, by Belle C. Dietz, began, and Sam Moskowitz wrote two detailed historical articles about proto-sf . However, the March 1960 issue was the last one. Fredric Brown 's "The Mind Thing" had begun serialization in that issue; it

2016-686: The magazine included Harlan Ellison , Jorge Luis Borges , Clifford Simak , Harry Harrison , and Robert Bloch . Two articles by Sam Moskowitz appeared in the last few months of the magazine, "Two Thousand Years of Space Travel", and "To Mars and Venus in the Gay Nineties", on early science fiction; these had been intended for publication in Satellite Science Fiction , one of the magazines Margulies had started when he left King-Size Publications, but Satellite had ceased publication in early 1959. Under King-Size Publications,

2072-418: The magazine, edited by Santesson, appeared in 1960 from Prentice-Hall , titled The Fantastic Universe Omnibus . The early 1950s saw dramatic changes in the world of U.S. science fiction (sf) publishing. At the start of 1949, all but one of the major magazines in the field were in pulp format; by the end of 1955, almost all sf magazines had either ceased publication or switched to digest format. This change

2128-405: The occasional funny dialogue — particularly that of Mamselle Cunning Earth Link, the most intriguingly depicted character. (At times I thought I detected echoes of Alfred Bester , in particular.) John C. Snider, similarly, suggested "Future Classic or Total Gibberish?": It's a bold, energetic pouring-out of Clute's vision of a future civilization in which social display is an obsession, and where

2184-511: The page count to 96 pages. The magazine was initially bimonthly. The first three issues were named with two months: "June–July 1953", and so on. At the end of 1953 the naming was changed to the odd numbered months; and then after January, March, May, and July, the magazine went monthly, starting with the September 1954 issue. This lasted without a break until the November 1958 issue. Another bimonthly schedule, starting with January 1959, followed;

2240-507: The reader, "Find this book! You won't be sorry!" and admires Clute's continuing capacity to oversee the field every year, his willingness to at least check out the dross as well as engage the golden few. Many of us who read so much genre stuff come to a point, or so at least I suspect, of casual acquaintance, and so give fairly 'enjoyment-oriented' reviews that simply say, 'if you like this kind of thing you will like this one.' That Clute has read so much and refused to lower his standards one iota

2296-431: The reading experience, much as the world Klavier itself is formed onion-style. Some reviewers were of two minds: Read this book for the often intoxicating pleasure of the prosody — though to some people's taste it may be simply too much of a good thing. Or read it for the heavily recomplicated and well-imagined, if hard to follow, details of the setting and technology. Or for the sense of a truly different future... Or for

Fantastic Universe - Misplaced Pages Continue

2352-619: The top writers. Santesson himself, despite a modicum of controversy over his heavy use of UFO and related material, was kind and helpful to writers, and was well liked as a result. According to sf critic John Clute , Fantastic Universe "published second-rank work by many well-known writers", and was one of the "magazines that never seem to ... publish much worthwhile material", and sf critic and historian Brian Stableford describes Fantastic Universe as "the poor man's F&SF ". In October 1955, Santesson began contributing "Universe in Books",

2408-422: The truth are like cholesterol . They are lumps of fat. They starve the heart. I have myself certainly clogged a few arteries, have sometimes kept my mouth shut out of 'friendship' which is nothing in the end but self-interest. So perhaps it is time to call a halt. Perhaps we should establish a Protocol of Excessive Candour, a convention within the community that excesses of intramural harshness are less damaging than

2464-421: The writers' primacy and appropriating their creative fire. SF reviewing has often had a strong tendency to be plot-oriented or to gush over technological content, whereas Clute's recensions of plot tended to make him appear effortlessly superior to the plodding book in hand, and his expansive loquacity and highly dramatic style of writing could arouse hostile feelings of inferiority in SF fans. ... Clute knew that SF

2520-538: Was "A Man Must Die", which appeared in New Worlds in 1966. In 1960, he served as Associate Editor of Collage, a Chicago-based "slick" magazine which ran only two issues; it published early work by Harlan Ellison and R. A. Lafferty . During the 1960s and 70s he appeared chiefly in NEW WORLDS , becoming an important contributor of essays and reviews. In 1977, Clute published his first novel, The Disinheriting Party ( Allison & Busby ). Though not explicitly

2576-512: Was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor and critic. He was also known under the pen names Frank Mason , Alger Rome in collaboration with Jerome Bixby , John A. Sentry , William Scarff and Paul Janvier . In the 1990s he was the publisher and editor of the science fiction magazine Tomorrow Speculative Fiction . Budrys was born in Königsberg , Germany (present-day Kaliningrad , Russia ). His father Jonas Budrys

2632-503: Was adapted for the screen in 1973. In addition to numerous Hugo Award and Nebula Award nominations, Budrys won the Science Fiction Research Association 's 2007 Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to speculative fiction scholarship. In 2009, he was the recipient of one of the first three Solstice Awards presented by the SFWA in recognition of his contributions to the field of science fiction. Having published about 100 stories and

2688-431: Was cut short at five numbers when the magazine returned to a bimonthly schedule at the end of 1958. Volume 11 had six numbers; volume 12 had five. The editors were: Cover art was by Alex Schomburg , Ed Emshwiller , Kelly Freas , and Mel Hunter , and towards the end there was a long sequence of covers by Virgil Finlay . Algis Budrys Algirdas Jonas " Algis " Budrys (January 9, 1931 – June 9, 2008)

2744-561: Was educated at the University of Miami and later at Columbia University in New York City. Incorporating his family's experience, Budrys's fiction depicts isolated and damaged people and themes of identity, survival and legacy. He taught himself English at the age of six by reading Robinson Crusoe . From Flash Gordon comic strips, Budrys read H. G. Wells 's The Time Machine ; Astounding Science Fiction caused him at

2800-482: Was eventually published in book form later that year.       Sam Merwin       Beatrice Jones       Leo Margulies       Hans Stefan Santesson The magazine began as a 192-page digest, priced at 50 cents, giving it more pages than the competing magazines but also pricing it higher than any of them. The experiment did not last, presumably because sales figures were weak:

2856-512: Was excited by Appleseed, writing, This book sits at the top of the mountain of achievement in postmodern space opera that has gone before, commenting on all its predecessors (not coincidentally, the name of the vanished alien elders in the book itself) while adding its glittering capstone to the peak. Any reader with even a passing familiarity with SF will unpack scores of allusions in this novel (and not only to SF, but to much other pop culture and literature), layering skin upon skin of meaning to

SECTION 50

#1732791212249

2912-521: Was in digest format, dated June–July 1953, and priced at 50 cents. This was higher than any of the competing magazines, but it also had the highest page count in the field at the time, with 192 pages. The initial editorial team was Leo Margulies as publisher, and Sam Merwin as editor; this was a combination familiar to science fiction fans from their years together at Thrilling Wonder Stories , which Merwin had edited from 1945 to 1951. King-Size Publications also produced The Saint Detective Magazine , which

2968-410: Was largely the work of the distributors, such as American News Company , who refused to carry the pulp magazines since they were no longer profitable; the loss of profitability was in turn associated with the rise in mass-market science fiction publishing, with paperback publishers such as Ace Books and Ballantine Books becoming established. Along with the increase in science fiction in book form came

3024-472: Was not only worthy of real criticism, but that it needed it. ... Clute said that Canadian SF writers, like A. E. Van Vogt and Gordon Dickson , wrote about protagonists afflicted with the burden of guiding humanity up the evolutionary ladder, and it might be said that Clute has undertaken a similar responsibility for SF's understanding of itself. In a review of Look at the Evidence, Douglas Barbour exhorts

3080-532: Was popular, so Fantastic Universe enjoyed good distribution from the start—a key factor in a magazine's success. Merwin left after three issues, and after a brief period in which Beatrice Jones was editor, Margulies took over as editor with the May 1954 issue. King-Size Publications was in debt by mid-1956, and in August Margulies sold his stake in the company to Herbert, telling a friend that in addition to

3136-559: Was the consul general of Lithuania . In 1936, when Budrys was five years old, Jonas was appointed as the consul general in New York City. After the Soviet Union's occupation of Lithuania in 1940, Budrys helped his family run a chicken farm in New Jersey while his father was part of the exiled Lithuanian Diplomatic Service , since the United States continued to recognize the pre- World War II Lithuanian diplomats. Budrys

#248751